Wednesday, 25 March 2015

THE DAILY PIC: This is one of many chilling images from "Margret: Chronicle of an Affair- May 1969 to December 1970", a gripping exhibition at White Columns
in New York, where it was organized in collaboration with Galerie
Susanne Zander / Delmes & Zander, Cologne. The show is built around
the discovery, a few years back, of a briefcase full of mementoes
gathered during the course of an 18-month affair between a German boss
and his secretary. The whole archive—mostly photos of the woman and
typed, almost clinical, records of the sex the couple they had— is a
fine and cautionary reminder of the state of gender relations at the
time: the overall impression is of a man who feels that he owns the
woman he is sleeping with, because he has taken control of her body. (He
even gets ahold of, and catalogues, the empty packaging from her
birth-control pills.) Somehow, the ultimate symbol of the man's control
is the absurd bouffant hairdo that the woman wears in almost all of the
photos, regardless of how little else she has on. It feels to me like a
giant handicap that her culture has foisted on her— a notably stylish
ball-and-chain. (Photo courtesy White Columns, New York)

Saturday, 21 March 2015

"Martina Kubelk's self-documentation (...) is valuable as a poignant
example of how photography can be used to perform alternate identities -
or, in this case, perhaps, affirm the photographer - subject's true
self."

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Organized in collaboration with Galerie Susanne Zander / Delmes & Zander, Cologne.White Columns is proud to present in collaboration with Galerie Susanne
Zander / Delmes & Zander, Cologne + Berlin, the American debut
of "Margret: Chronicle of an Affair – May 1969 to December 1970", an
extraordinary collection of found materials relating to a private affair
conducted between a German businessman and his secretary in the late
1960s and early 1970s.

"Margret" chronicles a secret love story, which took place from May 1969
to December 1970 between the Cologne businessman Günter K., 39, and his
secretary Margret S., 24. The exhibition – and a subsequent publication
- consists of the photographs, documents and objects that were found
three decades later in a briefcase abandoned in a German apartment. The
archive consists of hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs
showing the same woman (Margret S.) in various places and poses: sitting
at a typewriter at the office, traveling, or in hotel rooms,
undressing, changing, or getting dressed. In the archive, inscribed with
dates, are samples of Margret's hair (from both her head and pubic
region), her fingernails, and empty contraception packages, as well as a
blood-stained napkin. Receipts from hotels and restaurants, as well as
travel documents and tickets from theaters, reveal insights into the
places the couple visited as well as acknowledging their preferences and
interests. Personal notes and diary entries, mostly written with a
typewriter, resemble official records. The focus of virtually all these
writings is the sexual act, its frequency, its endurance, etc. - all
factually underlined yet at the same time described in a coarse and
often obscene language. In its conceptual denseness - resulting partly
from the obsessiveness of the documentation - the collection seems to
reverberate with the practices of artists such as Sophie Calle, where
the viewer often finds themselves in a conflicted space, exposed to
their own voyeurism.

In his introduction to the original presentation of ‘Margret’ in Innsbruck curator Veit Loers observed:“In September 1970, the diary entries set in, with precise
descriptions of what happens during foreplay and then of the sexual act
itself, but also mentioning all kinds of things happening besides. All
this is meticulously typed, in red and black ink, as by a bookkeeper of
his own obsession. The couple go on "business trips" in Günter's Opel
Kapitän, stay at spa hotels and visit the casino in Wiesbaden. Then the
trysts begin to take place in an attic flat in Günter's store building.
Nobody is supposed to know, but people must notice something. Margret
prepares roulades and redfish filets with cucumber salad. They drink
Cappy (orange juice) with a green shot (Escorial, strong liquor) and
watch "colourful television." Margret dresses for him in the clothes he
has bought her. He, the perfect lover, in truth is a macho man who wants
to have everything under control. She enjoys his attention, his
generosity, is happy to let herself be manipulated, is jealous, becomes
pregnant despite the pills, and has an illegal abortion − for the third
time in her young life. Just before Christmas 1970 the reports and
photographs break off. The relationship appears to be at an end. Margret
is scared. She tells him that "after Christmas the fucking will be over
and you will not dance at two weddings anymore." He gets involved with
other women. These are no love stories, though, just obsessive sexual
romps, chronicled nonetheless in hundreds of grotesque documents
testifying to the stuffy German milieu in the early years of the Kohl
era.”

The book ‘Margret: Chronik einer Affare – Mai 1969 bis Dezember 1970’
was published in German in 2012 on the occasion of exhibitions of this
material at the Kunstraum, and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art,
Berlin. The book is now out-of-print. The White Columns’ presentation
of ‘Margret’ is the first presentation of the materials in a non-German
speaking context. A selection of the translated texts are available at
the gallery.

Delmes
& Zander I Berlin picks up on John
K. - SITTING, the
first solo show by the artist at Galerie Susanne Zander I Cologne,
with a new look into this fascinating body of work. Formerly known to
us only by an abbreviation of his last name, recent ongoing research
into this oeuvre has disclosed new facts :

John
K.'s real name is John Kayser, born in 1922 in North Dakota. His
family moved to Pasadena, California, sometime around the early
1930s, where Kayser grew up. As a young man he took classes at the
Stickney Memorial Art School, which had opened in 1912 and was among
the first major art schools opened in the Los Angeles area. Later he
served in the military from 1943 to 1945 as a private in the 18th
Bomber Squadron, 34th Bomber Group, which flew air offenses in Europe
during World War II. His military occupational specialty was Airplane
Armorer 911, which corresponds to his job: John Kayser worked for
Northrup Aircraft Incorporated for 40 years, starting in 1941 on the
assembly line and moving on to working as a technical illustrator at
the company in the 1960s. From 1948 to 1954 he studied at the Art
Center of Los Angeles and, in 1952, at the Allied Art School in
Glendale, California. A few snapshots from the late 1940s suggest
that he may have been married to a woman named Lilly, but she does
not appear in any photographs nor is she mentioned in any letters or
documents beyond those dates. Other than the women who modeled
regularly in this photographs, and with whom he seems to have had
close but never sexual relations, John appears to have been single up
to his death in 2007.

Throughout
his military service and working years at Northrup, he actively made
portrait paintings and pastels, entering and winning awards in many
community art shows and fairs in the Los Angeles area. The earliest
photographs date from the early 1960s and appear at first to be an
extension of his figure drawing practice, but while his drawings and
paintings never really evolved beyond the art club aesthetic of the
time, from the start he was able to create a distinct visual language
in his photographs and in the 8mm films he made alongside. While
rooted in the foundations of his art school training, in the
photographs we see John giving voice to sexual obsessions alongside a
kind of visual declaration of how he saw female beauty. Beyond a few
dozen black and white photographs of his earliest model, all the
original prints are Kodacolor snapshots from 35mm film that was
likely processed and printed by John's neighborhood camera shop.

In
this second show we will be featuring a selection of original vintage
photographs by John Kayser from a period dating from the mid-1970s
when he was in his 50s. They let the viewer catch a glimpse into
Kayser's private world, where subtle details lend insight into the
life and practice of a man obsessed with the beauty of the female
form and the loss of beauty, and whose oeuvre we have only just begun
to unravel.

In 2013, the Smithsonian American Art Museum
acquired a collection of over 150 artworks made between 1969 and 1976 by
a self–taught Washington, D.C. artist known only by his alter-ego,
Mingering Mike.

The Mingering Mike collection comprises artworks constructed as part
of the artist’s youthful fantasy of becoming a famous soul singer and
songwriter, including LP albums made from painted cardboard, original
album art, song lyrics and liner notes, self-recorded 45 rpm singles and
more, all tracing the career of a would-be superstar. The works powerfully evoke the black entertainers of the late 1960s
and ’70s and are a window onto an historical moment when black radio was
new and Washington-based performers like Marvin Gaye were gaining
national attention and transforming American music. Mingering Mike was
among the countless kids who dreamed of being discovered. The lines between fantasy and reality are fluid in this body of
work—Mingering Mike’s exuberantly illustrated record covers feature
characters drawn from the artist’s own family and friends as well as
“reviews” by real musicians such as Marvin Gaye and James Brown, and
recordings of the artist’s original music are stamped with claims of
having been made live in Washington hot spots such as the Howard
Theatre. The collection was lost to the artist in the early 2000s and
discovered at a Washington flea market by “record digger” and criminal
investigator Dori Hadar in 2004. Hadar posted pictures of the albums to
an online record forum and the imaginary superstar quickly became a cult
sensation. Hadar eventually located the artist, who still resides in
Washington, and connected him with art dealer and curator George
Hemphill, who arranged the first exhibitions of Mingering Mike’s work. Untrained as either musician or visual artist, Mingering Mike
nonetheless embodies a critical component of the American Dream,
conquering tough circumstances by actualizing—to whatever extent
possible—a world filled with fame, fortune, and happiness. This
exhibition presents the vibrant creativity of this singular artist and
powerfully conveys the larger American cultural phenomena that are so
fully enmeshed in his words and images.This installation will feature a wide array of objects from the
collection, selected by Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught
art.